TeaWithTater.com

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

*******************************************************************************************************************************************

On this day in 1875, the Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated in Paris.

The Palais Garnier is a 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was called the Salle des Capucines, because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier, in recognition of its opulence and its architect, Charles Garnier. The theatre is also often referred to as the Opéra Garnier and historically was known as the Opéra de Paris or simply the Opéra, as it was the primary home of the Paris Opera and its associated Paris Opera Ballet until 1989, when the Opéra Bastille opened at the Place de la Bastille. The Paris Opera now mainly uses the Palais Garnier for ballet.

The Palais Garnier is a symbol of Paris like Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, or the Sacré Coeur Basilica. This is at least partly due to its use as the setting for Gaston Leroux‘s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera and, especially, the novel’s subsequent adaptations in films and the popular 1986 musical. 

The Palais Garnier also houses the Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra de Paris (Paris Opera Library-Museum). The museum is included in unaccompanied tours of the Palais Garnier.

The theatre was formally inaugurated with a lavish gala performance attended by Marshal MacMahon, the Lord Mayor of London and King Alfonso XII of Spain. The program included the overtures to Auber‘s La muette de Portici and Rossini‘s William Tell, the first two acts of Halévy‘s 1835 opera La Juive (with Gabrielle Krauss in the title role), along with “The Consecration of the Swords” from Meyerbeer‘s 1836 opera Les Huguenots and the 1866 ballet La source with music by Delibes and Minkus. As a soprano had fallen ill one act from Charles Gounod’s Faustand one from Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet had to be omitted. During the intermission Garnier stepped out onto the landing of the grand staircase to receive the approving applause of the audience.

Today is the birthday of Pablo Emilio Gargallo Catalán (Maella, Aragon, Spain; 5 January 1881 – 28 December 1934 Reus, Tarragona, Spain); sculptor and painter.

He spent a significant part of his life in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France. In 1903, he invested a studio at the Cité d’Artistes, rue Vercingétorix in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. There he met Max Jacob and Carlos Casagemas, both friends of Pablo Picasso.

In 1907, he stayed at the artists commune Le Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre with Max Jacob, Juan Gris and other artists. He spent his first night in the studio of his friend Picasso, whose head he modeled as a sculpture. There he was able to contemplate Picasso’s seminal proto-Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Shortly thereafter, Juan Gris introduced him to Magali Tartanson, whom he married in 1915. During this period, Gargallo was influenced by the work of Picasso.

Among Gargallo’s works are three pieces based on Greta Garbo: “Masque de Greta Garbo à la mèche,” “Tête de Greta Garbo avec chapeau,” and “Masque de Greta Garbo aux cils.” Together with Dídac Masana, Gargallo sculpted the great arch over the front of the stage of the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona. The work depicts the Ride of the Valkyries in Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre (The Valkyries).

Gargallo suffered from fulminating bronchial pneumonia and died in Reus, Tarragona. He is considered to be one of the most significant artists of the Spanish avant-garde, and in 1985 the Pablo Gargallo Museum in Zaragoza opened in the former Argillo Palace. Gargallo’s birthplace and early home, on the street now dedicated to his name in Maella, Zaragosa, has been transformed into a museum dedicated to his life and works

Galería

• 

  Retrato de Picasso, 1913

   

  

  1930, Portrait de Greta Garbo steel

  
  

And today is the birthday of William De Witt Snodgrass (January 5, 1926 – January 13, 2009); poet who also wrote under the pseudonym S. S. Gardons. He was studying poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the early 1950s when his marriage began to fall apart, and he began writing about it in his poems. He showed some of hispoems to his teacher, the poet Robert Lowell, but Lowell didn’t like them. He said, “You’ve got a brain; you can’t write this kind of tear-jerking stuff.”Lowell later helped Snodgrass get his poetry collection, Heart’s Needle, published in 1959. It was Snodgrass’s first book, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. Lowell called it “a breakthrough for modern poetry.”

Snodgrass’s work helped inspire other poets to write openly about their personal lives.

Snodgrass married his first wife, Lila Jean Hank, in 1946. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1953. The following year Snodgrass married his second wife, Janice Marie Ferguson Wilson. Divorcing again in 1966, he married his third wife, Camille Rykowski in 1967 but this ended in 1978. His fourth marriage to Kathleen Ann Brown was in 1985.

…………

……

By god, D. H. Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage?

– Stella Gibbons

Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.

– Stella Gibbons